User:SelenaDeWaard/Stefanie Koscher

Stefanie Koscher (born 1984 in Friesach) is an Austrian musician and multidisciplinary artist currently based in Vienna.

Education and Early Career
Stefanie Koscher holds a Masters Degree in Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Her thesis titled ''Creative Director‘s Opera vs. Smashing Classics By Deconstruction. Postmodern Opera Directing And Works Righteousness Based On The Example Of W.A. Mozart‘s And Lorenzo Da Ponte‘s Don Giovanni'' was published by the Akademikerverlag Riga in 2013.

Coming from a performing arts and stage educational background, she worked in theaters such as The Public NYC, Staatsoper unter den Linden Berlin, Burgtheater Vienna, Bushwick Starr Brooklyn, assisting Andrea Breth, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the Elevator Repair Service NYC amongst others.

Music
Stefanie Koscher is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and DJ. In the mid 2000s she joined Vienna’s club scene spinning techno and house records at locations such as Wurstsalon, Flex and others. She hosted her own Saturday night live radio show „Steffko Latenight“ at the independent Viennese radio station Radio Orange 94.0.

After moving to New York in 2009, she started playing in various Avantgarde- and Artrock bands such as Huggabroomstik, Ching Chong Song, The Johns and Pie Face. She started playing her own songs under the avant-grunge type solo project Steffko and The Steffkos, performing in various NYC venues over the next couple of years. In 2011 she founded the Art Rock supergroup Steffko and the Facebookbraggerz, along with Luke Kelly of the Fem Doms and Brent Cole of the Moldy Peaches, collaborating with The Johns, Harlem underground rapper WIFI and others. In 2013, she founded the garage type band Koscher together with Adam Cohen. In 2014, she founded the Open Mic Vienna 2.0 at the Loft Vienna, which she hosted until 2018. In 2018, she started studying Jazz Vocals with Heidi Krenn.

Art
Koschers transmedial concepts are often supported by and expressed through video and digital media, whilst maintaining a strong performative character. Transformatory processes of the human psyche in a post-virtual age have constituted an important focal point in her work.

Living and working in NYC (with occasional stays in Berlin from 2009-2013), she developed a virtual performative persona called Steffko - Die Kunst #1 (short: #SDK1): the protagonist of most of her audiovisual digital media pieces.

She also works in with analog media and creates mixed media works with collage character. Her images contrast the abstract and the figurative and are aiming to bring a utopian balance into a chaotic overflow of visual stimuli. End-products often become dissonant, alienated and strange and put a spotlight on the absurd and contradictory. Her visual work explores different layers of consciousness and often asks the spectator to decrypt context and meaning intuitively.

She performed and exhibited her work at Tate Modern London, PS122 Manhattan, El Museo el Barrio NYC, Bushwick Open Studios Seeking Space, Envoy Art Space Manhattan, Take Festival Vienna, Tanzquartier Vienna, Museumsquartier Vienna and more.

Additionally Stefanie Koscher curated a number of exhibitions and showcases in Vienna.

Solo Exhibitions and Performances
• Screenshots of Despair (2020). Jan Arnold Gallery Q21, MQ Vienna.

• Home is where the Heart is pt.1. (2017). Festival MASC Foundation Vienna.

• The Life and Death of Steffko - Die Kunst #1 (2020). AA Collections Vienna

• Steffko - Die Kunst #1: Nomophobia (2013). Bizarre Bushwick, Brooklyn NY.

• iSolation 3.0 (2013). Kubus Export Vienna.

Publications
• Koscher, Stefanie. 2014. Schöpferische Regieoper vs. klassikerzertrümmernde Dekonstruktion: Regietheater und Werkgerechtigkeit am Beispiel von W.A. Mozarts und Da Pontes Don Giovanni. Riga: Akademikerverlag.

Discography
• Koscher - Inside Out. A live album. Self-release. Sept. 21st, 2018.